


The sun in his smile

by ninolue



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:22:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninolue/pseuds/ninolue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All day long, looking at his face shining in front of the blue waves, I really thought we still had a chance. I thought Hamish would have seen the sea so many other times in his life. But then, while the boat was docking and the little heart of my son’s, who had fallen asleep in my arms, was beating against my chest, I looked at the dark circles under his eyes and at the pallor of his complexion, and a poignant grief clung to my heart. I thought: “God, let him live, God please, don’t take him away from me”, because I knew that only a miracle could save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The sun in his smile

My son Hamish had wanted to become a pirate, as an adult. That was the idea Sherlock suggested to him one night, while we were putting him to bed. He would have been a great pirate, and he would have sailed the seas with his Batman pajamas. That’s why, in the end, we brought him to the sea. We rented a boat and stayed out for an entire day, ten minutes from the shore. It was good. All day long, looking at his face shining in front of the blue waves, I really thought we still had a chance. I thought Hamish would have seen the sea so many other times in his life. But then, while the boat was docking and the little heart of my son’s, who had fallen asleep in my arms, was beating against my chest, I looked at the dark circles under his eyes and at the pallor of his complexion, and a poignant grief clung to my heart. I thought: “God, let him live, God please, don’t take him away from me”, because I knew that only a miracle could save him.

We had been loking for a baby so much, Sherlock and I. After the wedding we set up the papers for the adoption. I always wanted kids; creating a little family was my dream, and I begged Sherlock to make it come true. It took two years before someone contacted us to tell us that yes, soon we would become parents, and I waited for that call every day. We knew it would be him when they told us the name - Hamish. It looked like a strange twist of fate. He was already one year old but nobody wanted to take the responsibility of loving him: Hamish was ill with a serious form of leukemia. When they told us, Sherlock and I were dumbfounded; did we really want to take the risk of loving a child and then losing him? The answer came naturally to us. Yes, we did. Hamish brought with him a part of both of us: of mine he had the name, and of Sherlock’s he had the curse of not having anyone brave enough to love him. Anyone except me.

The day we first met I felt like a kid on the Christmas Eve. Sherlock told me, with a fake annoyed tone of the voice, to stop behaving that way, but I could see in his eyes a new light, a spark of happiness.

He was drawing, the first time I saw him. Drawing lines of different colors on white paper, absorbed in his art, changing pencil with each stroke. He looked up when we came into the room. He had fine blond hair and a pair of big dark eyes. I looked at him and I thought: “This is my son”. It took an incredibly short time for him to begin trusting us. After a week he screamed for joy and leapt upon us as he saw us walking into the room. I can’t describe the feeling I had when he hugged me, it was like I knew I had to hold him tight and protect him from everything, to give him the most beautiful things in the world and make sure that he was never, never unhappy in his life.

We took him home one month after. We kept him in the same room with us: we never said it out loud, but both Sherlock and I were frightened that his condition could get worse at night and we couldn’t reach him to do something in time. We enrolled him into kindergarten, and for the first six months, by mutual, unspoken consent, Sherlock and I stood nearby, ignoring the cases and just walking around the area. Then, one day, Hamish took us by surprise asking why he always saw us walking on the pavement out of the window. From that moment we began again to go around London, with a silent weight on our shoulders. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but we learnt it with time: it was the sign that we had become parents.

At first we managed to coexist with Hamish’s disease. It required several cycles of chemotherapy, but there were months in which they weren’t necessary. But it was hard. Each time it seemed like Hamish was better I felt an unreasonable relief; maybe the disease was gone, maybe it wouldn’t come back. But then, one morning, Hamish would be too tired to get out of bed, or his skin lost its color, and I’d understand that it had started all over again. We tried to let him live as peacefully as possible, telling him everyday how lucky we were to have him as a son and meeting each one of his (few) requests. Sherlock showed him all of his test tubes and let him see under the microscope each time Hamish asked him. Once he spent an entire night translating for him the songs from cartoons, from English to Russian. But it wasn’t a burden for him. It wasn’t for us. His smile was worth more than anything else.

Things got worse shortly before his fourth birthday. By that time the chemo was necessary every three months, and Hamish was always more exhausted, more tired of being sick. One day, while he was sitting on the sofa next to me, he asked me: “Daddy, why are my friends fine and I’m not?” It was a legitimate question and I didn’t know what to say. “Peter says maybe that’s because I’ve been naughty”, he kept on.

I held back the tears and looked at him.  
“Come here”, I told him, patting the hands on my thighs. Hamish, obedient, curled up on me.  
“You never did anything wrong, never. And your father and I love you so much. Do you know why we chose you?”. He looked at me searching for an answer. “Because you were perfect, Hamish. You were perfect.”  
He burst out laughing and then he laid his head on my chest. “So why, then?”  
“I don’t know,” I whispered, “I don’t know.”  
When Sherlock came back home, that night, I locked myself up in the bathroom and cried all of my tears. Hamish’s question kept on ranging in my ears: why?

We tried to change the therapy, alternating chemo to radiotherapy. We went on like that for almost a year. We couldn’t give up, even if, by then, Hamish didn’t even have the strength to go to school and he spent his days in bed. I stayed with him. I caressed his forehead and told him stories which had him as the protagonist: he was a hero, a knight, a captain. He always won, every time. And he had to win that one, too. Sherlock was out almost all day, he got around consulting those doctors who were considered the best of the country, but all of them shook their heads: if no therapy was working, then there was nothing more to do. We couldn’t, we didn’t want to give up, because a life without Hamish was not even acceptable, it wasn’t possible. But there came the day when we couldn’t go on anymore: Hamish said “enough”. We were coming back from yet another session of chemo, we were in the cab when Hamish, in Sherlock’s arms, whispered: “Enough, dad.”  
“Enough what?”, he immediately asked.  
“Enough with the airplanes,” he said. That’s what we called the needles from the chemo. It was a simple way of making them less fearful.  
“Enough.”

We didn’t want to listen to him, we didn’t want to listen to the pleas of our little boy, even though a part of us knew that there was nothing else we could do.

How could we ignore his will? How could we keep on letting him suffer, with the illusory promise of a better future? We soon understood it wasn’t possible. We signed a form against the aggressive treatment and we brought Hamish home from the hospital, for the last time. We took him to the sea, like I said, and we pretended that everything was alright, that we were just a family on holiday, a happy family. There we spent his last birthday, in a little town called Whitby, not too far away from London. Hamish was amazed when he saw the sea: he had never dreamed that it was so big. He closed his eyes on the boat, while a salted breeze caressed his proved body.  
“Are you happy?” I asked him.  
He nodded and smiled.

He died in the morning, my boy, my only treasure, my beloved little man. The lights of the house were out, and only a sunbeam penetrated trough the shutters. He closed his eyes against my chest, while his legs were laid down next to Sherlock’s, where he sat next to me on the couch. We told him how much we loved him. We told him to be brave, because he was a pirate, a great pirate. We said to him for the hundredth time how amazing it had been to get the chance to be his parents. We whispered lullabies in his ears and we died too, slowly, while he was breathing out for the last time.

If I could still have him here I’d tell him all the things I never managed to: I would explain to him the byway I crossed when I was a kid, coming back from school, and I’d teach him the scientific names of the parts of the body. I’d recount to him all the secrets I never told anyone and I’d invent a thousand more stories about him, about my little hero. But he’s not there. And I miss him every day. Hamish was the biggest gift I’ve ever received, and I thank whoever gave me the opportunity to be his father, but the pain I feel every moment since he’s been gone, is something I can’t explain. When the sorrow is too heavy I imagine he’s here with me. With the sun in his smile and the breeze ruffling his hair. A little pirate. My pirate.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, uhm, I'm not english so I'm sorry if I made any mistakes writing :)


End file.
